


Won't Mind the Hanging

by youwilllovemylaugh



Category: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon, Prequel, among other kinds of partnership, banjo serenades over breakfast, bc I'm trash, musical partnership, vague belly kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-16 17:11:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5833756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youwilllovemylaugh/pseuds/youwilllovemylaugh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>obviously we need to know what happened to llewyn davis and mike timlin before things got tragic. </p><p>((i will try my v best to update regularly~))</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The year was 1959 – or, now it was 1960 – and it was New Year’s Eve, and Llewyn was, somehow, playing a set at the Gaslight.

He’d been coming here a lot for the past couple of years, ever since he came back from the Merchant Marine and moved back in with his parents and stopped feeling like he was alive. He used to play with another guy on the ship he’d been on, Randall, and on their off nights, they’d sing a couple songs they both knew, even wrote a few when the nights got really long, but even after he found the Gaslight, started badgering Pappi, the manager, about his maybe playing one night, music hadn’t really gone anywhere for Llewyn.

Until tonight. Maybe. Three weeks ago, Llewyn had been down here on one of his customary trips, blowing fifty bucks at the bar on drinks he knew would never win him anything in Pappi’s book. He’d been asking about playing for months and it had gotten him nowhere, but that night something had told him to give it one last shot – and, of course, he landed the gig. This gig. New Year’s Eve. By the time Pappi, who had been stoned on heroin on that fateful evening, realized he’d promised what was arguably his best night all year, to a sad-eyed, slow-singing, dead-end folk artist, it was too late to retract the offer.

Llewyn was third up on stage. The two acts before him – a forties-style barbershop quartet who had not managed to please the crowd, and a small-voiced harpist, who had only elicited vulgar comments from the drunker patrons – were, needless to say, less than exciting. But he was nervous nonetheless. He hadn’t practiced much this week, and his best songs were only his best because Randall had been able to hit the high notes. He knew that even as the third act for a post-midnight, New Year’s Eve crowd, he’d have to do better than that.

The crowd wasn’t paying much attention, except for some guy in the middle, sitting by himself at a table, whose eyes, despite their droopy lids, were affixed to Llewyn’s face as if their gaze had been sewn there. Llewyn looked away from this man and down at the mike.

Before this, Llewyn had played for audiences exactly twice, both times on the ship, both times with his singing partner, both times after several shots of scotch. He had never performed alone. With a final sigh to himself, he let his eyelids flutter shut as he moved in toward the mike to say, “Good evening.”

The ambient voices lilted and waned to a whisper. He opened his eyes and was surprised by the crowd’s sudden attentiveness, their ethereal appearance beneath the moonlight streaming in from the skylight in the ceiling, and the yellow flood from the dim stage strip. None of their faces looked real, he thought, and that was helpful.

“I’m Llewyn Davis,” he said, slurring his words on purpose. “This is my first gig here at the Gaslight.”

A couple sparse cheers. The man with the eyes didn’t make a sound, but Llewyn saw the corner of his mouth tip up.

“This first one is something I wrote with a buddy from the Merchant Marine,” he said, and nobody said anything.

He picked the notes out from the strings of his guitar with just his fingertips – the work on the ships had toughed the skin there so that he didn’t need a pick. The tune was familiar enough, having played it on endless occasions on nights in the middle of nowhere, cloaked in moonlight stronger than what was leaking onto the stage. It was the words that gave him trouble.

He fumbled through them. Folk music was new to the scene – Llewyn himself had only heard about it recently, in an article he’d found thumbing through the back pages of a new copy of _Billboard_. Music with unknown origins. No one had to know that he’d made up half the words he’d just sung. It wasn’t his song, and it would never be his song, and they didn’t have to know that.

Emboldened by this mid-song realization, Llewyn stopped making up lyrics for the third verse. Instead he just played through it, the pleasant, melancholy sound of his guitar streaming through the air like the sad, warm complement to the chilly light above everyone’s heads. When he finished, improvising three extra instrumental verses to the end, there was a smattering of applause, and then people began to look at their watches: it was coming on one, now, and the subways wouldn’t be running much longer, and New Year’s Day was one for solemn reflection, not sleeping off a night of debauchery, so they’d better get going.

Llewyn started his next song, and even though it was one that he’d heard receive praise on the radio some time ago, by the time he’d finished it, the crowd had thinned to half its previous capacity.

The man who had stared at him was still there, though, and did not appear perturbed by the rest of the crowd’s dispersal. He sat comfortably in his wooden bar chair, hands on his belly, leaning back as if he’d drunk too much beer over the course of the evening and now it weighed, uncomfortably liquid, in his stomach.

“My last one,” Llewyn said, looking straight at the man in the audience, “is another one I wrote with my buddy from the Merchant Marine.”

The crowd kept thinning. This song was a long one, nearly six minutes, but Llewyn remembered more of the words this time, and even though the crowd consisted of Pappi and the man at the table by the time he was finished, he felt proud of himself when he strummed out the final chords of his song.

The man stood and clapped for him. Pappi began wiping down the bar, ignorant of anything going on behind him, as was usual when male performers were playing.

Llewyn didn’t have more than a minute to put his guitar back in its case before the man from the table was in his face.

He stuck out a hand. “Hi.”

Llewyn looked him over. He was taller than Llewyn by a solid six inches, and definitely heavier. He was drunk, certainly, but his eyes were kind despite the alcohol, and so Llewyn took the hand he proffered. “Hello. Llewyn Davis.”

“You said,” the man said. “I’m Mike Timlin.”

“Hey, lovebirds,” said Pappi from behind the bar. “We’re closin’ early. Get the fuck out.”

Mike looked a bit startled, but Llewyn nudged him and laughed. “That’s just Pappi. You wanna come out for a bit? Talk?”

“Yeah, actually,” Mike said. He didn’t seem startled by Llewyn’s sudden touch, like some men were. Llewyn took this as a good sign. “Hang on.” He walked back to his bar table, left a bill, grabbed his coat from where it was hanging on the back of his chair, and rejoined Llewyn, this time by the stage door.

Llewyn watched him the whole time, how he moved quickly despite his weight and the considerable amount of alcohol he appeared to have consumed, how his clothes fit him better than Llewyn’s ever had, until recently, how his shoulders rolled with a unique grace as he slung his heavy coat on over himself. He got the sense that Mike was a lot of things Llewyn would never be.

Llewyn held the stage door open for him, and they walked out into the freezing New York air. Streamers and glitter and paper confetti lined the Village streets. People were still out, but bars were closing, restaurants were closing, and the sidewalks were filling up quickly. The subway ran until two-thirty, but it was already two-fifteen and Llewyn didn’t want to end up stuck in a crowded rail car with this intriguing stranger on their way somewhere more amenable to conversation.

But he didn’t have his own place yet, and he’d brought women back to his parents’ house, but he had never brought home a man, and he didn’t really need his senile father to make any assumptions.

Regardless of whether those assumptions would end up being correct.

Or not.

Llewyn was running out of ideas quickly, but Mike spoke up.

“I have an apartment not too far from here,” he said. “It’s a couple blocks south of here, but we can walk.”

Llewyn shrugged, and started following Mike’s lead. He wove their way through the throngs of drunken celebrators fairly easily – his size made him easy to follow and hard not to let through. The walk was brisk and short, for which Llewyn was thankful, on account of his ill-exercised lungs freezing a little more with each breath.

Mike dug a ring of keys out of his coat pocket, dropped them, picked them up, shot a coy look at Llewyn, and then selected the right key from the ring and inserted it in the door. Llewyn had been hoping the tiny vestibule inside would be warm, but he had to wait another five good minutes until Mike unlocked the security door and they entered the stairwell before heat touched his face.

They climbed three flights of stairs before Mike approached a door, and by that point, Llewyn was horrendously out of breath. He didn’t know whether he felt validated, or secondhand-embarrassed when he realized that Mike, who lived here and should have been used to the stairs, was heaving breaths at an equal pace.

Mike unlocked the door, finally, and threw it open so Llewyn could enter first. It was dark, and Llewyn tried to step aside so that Mike could come in and find the light switch, but the second Llewyn stepped left, his hip came into contact with a sharp edge, and the force of his collision knocked something down, and it landed with a crash.

“Shit,” he said. Not a minute in the house of a stranger, and he was already breaking things. The light turned on, and he saw the splinters of a former ashtray littering the floor. “Hey, I’m sorry, man, I didn’t mean –”

But Mike was too busy laughing to accept the apology. He waved it off, and Llewyn noticed for the first time that Mike was wearing fingerless gloves, the same kind Llewyn himself had ridiculously worn every winter he’d spent on land, as if he’d have to pick up a guitar at a moment’s notice, and not have time to take off his gloves.

“It’s no problem, Llewyn,” Mike said, and Llewyn tried to ignore the dribble of pleasure that leaked out of his heart when he hear his name pass Mike’s lips.

Mike walked past the shards on the floor and flopped straight onto the couch, belly-down. He let out a big sigh, and for a second Llewyn wondered if Mike had passed out, and he would be stranded here for the night. At least he’d have somewhere warm to sleep tonight – maybe even a real bed, if Mike had already claimed the couch for himself. But then, Mike rolled over and sat up, and said, “So,” and gestured for Llewyn to take a seat somewhere else in his little living room.

As he did, in a ratty orange plush armchair, Mike leaned back up against the couch and unbuttoned his pants. Llewyn didn’t know what to make of this, but as he watched Mike’s head loll a bit on the sofa cushions, he wondered if maybe Mike had somehow gotten drunker since they’d left the bar. Stand up and feel it, and all that.

The kitchen and the little living room were both in the same room, so, with a quick look at Mike, Llewyn got back up out of the orange armchair, crossed to the kitchen, poured a glass of water, and returned to the living room area.

“Got you this,” he said, handing the glass to Mike, whose eyes fluttered open and then closed as he smiled, and took the glass from Llewyn.

“Thanks, pal,” he said, and gulped down the water fairly quickly. Llewyn wondered if he should look through some of the cabinets for crackers or bread or something, but he didn’t want to be too intrusive, if he was going to ask to stay over here. In a few minutes, though, Mike had consumed most of his water and was starting to perk up a bit, and Llewyn gave up on his crackers plot.

He sat down next to Mike on the couch. “So,” he said, angling himself toward Mike, “was there something you wanted to talk about?”

“Oh, yeah,” Mike said. He repositioned himself on the couch, leaned forward a little more so that he was closer to Llewyn’s face. “I saw you sing tonight, at the Gaslight.”

Llewyn tried not to laugh. “I know, that’s where we met.”

“Nice,” Mike said. “You were really good.”

“Thanks,” Llewyn said. “I’ve been playing a while, so I better be.”

Mike giggled, and it was kind of a silly, uncharacteristic thing. “Really? How long?”

“Few years.” It wasn’t exactly a lie – Llewyn had picked his first guitar up straight out of high school, nearly five years ago – but he had only been good enough to play for real for about a year.

“Well,” Mike said, “I sing, and I play too, and I’ve been for a few years, and I was wondering if you wanted to maybe collaborate sometime.”

It came out so fast, so confidently, that Llewyn didn’t really know how to react. He felt his smile, a phantom of the laugh he’d tried to hold back a moment ago, linger on his face for much longer than he felt was socially appropriate. “Oh,” he said, not really knowing what else to say.

Mike, who seemed unfortunately to have sobered up considerably in the last several minutes since Llewyn had given him the water, waited patiently for more a response. “So?” he prompted, when he didn’t get an answer.

But Llewyn still didn’t know what to say. The only other person he had ever worked well with on any sort of project was Diane, and the only project they’d been successful at was making and rather quickly aborting a child. He pushed the thought out of his mind before it could sour.

“Uh, I don’t know,” Llewyn said finally, and he could tell it wasn’t the response Mike had been hoping for.

“What’s stopping you?”

Llewyn shrugged. “Let’s just say I’m better as a solo act,” he said, and he was sure Mike could also feel the hollowness of that statement.

“Hm,” was all Mike could produce. Llewyn watched as processed this information, nodding his head, the shine in his eyes betraying the speed at which his brain was moving as he, most likely, thought about how bad Llewyn could possibly be as a partner.

Llewyn watched Mike for a long while. After a while, he relaxed a bit more against the couch, let out a couple of deep breaths. The clock on the wall above the radio told him it was 2:30 in the morning; apparently their walk to Mike’s apartment had taken much longer than Llewyn had felt it had.

“Is there anything I can say to convince you?” Mike asked finally, and Llewyn was a little startled by the resurgence of his voice.

Llewyn pushed his lips together, thought about it for a second. “I mean, I don’t think so. Last guy I worked with was a few years ago, when I was in the Merchant Marine, and –”

“Your buddy,” Mike filled in, and Llewyn nodded.

“Yeah. Him. And we didn’t get around to doing much,” Llewyn said. Sometimes he thought about Randall, and how all their nights together had been fraught with self-interest of solipsistic proportions. They had more fights than they wrote songs, which was why, after they docked almost two years ago, Randall went one way, and Llewyn went his own, and Llewyn never heard from him again. He often wondered about him, if he had gotten married, or gone into music too. Sometimes, if he’d had something to drink, Llewyn wondered if he liked to fuck guys like he had when Llewyn still knew him.

“Why’s that?” Mike asked.

“Well, there were a lot of reasons,” Llewyn said, and yeah, a lot of those reasons were that sometimes he and Randall blew their afternoons by blowing each other instead of actually writing music. And when they weren’t doing that, they were fighting, and the more Llewyn thought about it, the less sure he felt about which of those things he was more ashamed to admit to Mike.

But Mike raised his eyebrows like he needed details to be convinced about Llewyn’s shitty partnering abilities, and so Llewyn sighed and said, “We fought a lot.”

“About what?”

Llewyn sighed. It was closer now to 3:00 in the morning, and he wanted nothing more than to pass out already. “I don’t know, creative stuff, ambition stuff, the whole shebang.” He ran his tongue over his front teeth. “It wasn’t a great time.” And it wasn’t, when they weren’t fucking.

“That’s too bad,” Mike said. “But it is worth mentioning that creative differences change from person to person. You might not get the same experience partnering with someone else.” Then he clapped a hand on Llewyn’s shoulder, and it was heavy and warm and affectionate in a way Llewyn had, in all his years of service and almost-vagrancy, forgotten about. Something in the gesture made his uncertainty wane.

“I’m going to bed now, Llewyn,” Mike said, and Llewyn tried to ignore the little leap his heart gave when his name passed Mike’s lips again.

Mike stood up, and Llewyn noticed again that his pants were unbuttoned. He watched Mike, whose hips were at Llewyn’s eye-level, cross the room to the small dark hallway that led to another part of the apartment.

He was so mesmerized that he entirely forgot to ask if he could crash on the couch. “Hey,” he shouted after Mike, but he heard a door close. Since Mike hadn’t said anything to the contrary, Llewyn figured he wouldn’t mind if he passed out here for a bit, and snuck out before Mike got up the next morning.


	2. Chapter 2

Llewyn didn’t get up in time the next morning. When he finally woke up, the sunlight coming in from the window above the couch was too bright to be anything but mid-afternoon, and Mike was puttering around in the kitchen.

Something was cooking on the stove – Llewyn could both smell it and hear it frying, but he was too overwhelmed by embarrassment at having overstayed his welcome to figure out what it was he smelled. He remained frozen on the couch for a minute, deciding whether he wanted to go into the kitchen and play it off like he was supposed to be here, or if he wanted to slip on his pants and slink out the front door when Mike had his back turned. He figured that, either way he sliced it, the living room and the kitchen made up two halves of an open floor plan, and Mike would either hear him or see him do whatever it was that he decided to do.

Llewyn didn’t want to make it more awkward than it had to be.

Llewyn sat up finally, and stretched his arms over his head.

“Well,” Mike said, making a quarter-turn to watch as Llewyn shook sleep out of his body. “For someone who works alone, you certainly don’t mind relying on the generosity of others.”

Llewyn stuttered out a laugh. “Yeah, sorry about that,” he said, and looked down at the floor for his pants. He saw, beside them, the shards of ashtray that remained on the floor from the previous night, and so he added, “And sorry ’bout the ashtray, too. Clumsy.”

Mike shrugged. “Picked it up at the drugstore for a dollar.”

Llewyn didn’t know quite what to make of that response. He’d never exactly gotten the boot from any of the other friends whose couches he’d slept on in the past, even if they’d been less than pleased to have him stay. But there wasn’t any animosity in Mike’s voice, and when he made his way toward the kitchen, shoulders hunched over sheepishly, he noticed a second plate set on the small circular table in the middle of the room.

“I made breakfast,” Mike said then, with a much friendlier tone in his voice. Llewyn sat before the second plate and, inhaling the delicious aroma of freshly fried bacon, realized that he was ravenous.

“Nice of you,” Llewyn said. He eyed the bacon still frying on the stove, and the larger skillet of eggs still frying beside it. Mike nudged both pans with spatulas, with a grace and agility Llewyn was sure he would never be able to emulate, even if he weren’t hungover.

And Mike certainly was hungover. Llewyn could smell stale beer on him like he had slept on the floor of the Gaslight last night. With an iota of amazed embarrassment, Llewyn also realized that it had taken him this long to notice that Mike was not wearing any pants.

He had nice thighs, beneath the red cotton boxer shorts he wore, which did not exactly fit him. The swell of his belly hung over the top band, and Llewyn tried to ignore it as much as he could, looking at the salt and pepper shakers in the middle of the table instead: red and orange, in a loud floral pattern, with silver tops.

Mike turned around then, and slung a plate at Llewyn.

“Eat,” he said, and Llewyn didn’t have to be asked twice.

Not many words were exchanged at first. Llewyn shoveled the food into his mouth as quickly as he could without seeming impolite, and once Mike joined him, he let Llewyn eat without interruption. When Mike himself was finished, Llewyn watched as he leaned back and stretched his arms over his head, then ran a hand down the curve of his belly again, like he had the night before at the bar.

“How’s the food?” Mike asked, though Llewyn was scraping his plate clean.

“Good. Really good,” Llewyn said. He would never decline a free meal, and this one had been given willingly, happily it seemed. There was no way he was going to jeopardize that for the future.

“Nice,” Mike said, with a smile. Llewyn noticed the crinkles around his eyes, which made him look older than he was. He wondered if Mike was older than him, and if maybe that would make a difference if they partnered – Randall had only been nineteen when Llewyn knew him.

“Thanks for this,” Llewyn said, gesturing with his fork to the plate. “I don’t usually get breakfast when I unintentionally crash at strangers’ houses.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he cringed. Now Mike probably thought he spent many nights at strangers’ houses, and maybe Mike would guess that he didn’t have a place of his own, and maybe, as was wont to happen with other of Llewyn’s acquaintances, Mike wouldn’t want to associate with someone who could be classified as a vagrant.

Then Llewyn started wondering why any of that really mattered to him in the first place.

“It’s no problem,” Mike said. “And we’re not strangers, we spent a long time talking last night.”

Llewyn was kind of surprised that he remembered. “I spend a lot of nights talking to strangers,” he said. “You know, traveling artist, touring singer, that whole thing. Brings a lot of people into your life.”

Mike shrugged. “It’s never brought me anyone I didn’t want to keep around.”

And there they were again, back at the same question that had loomed over them the night before. Llewyn stifled a sigh, looked around at the kitchen’s muted olive greens and ocean blues, the stained and peeling cream linoleum floor. It was one of the nicer places he’d ever stayed at, save Jean and Jim’s place, which was still decently new and in Stuy Town. He put his fork down, folded his hands in front of his mouth.

He eyed Mike. Dark hair, but light eyes. Pale skin. His nose was a little too long for his face, and his beard was patchy at best, but he could be cleaned up, and still look decent on an album cover.

Llewyn backed up a second.

“You really wanna partner with me so bad?” he asked.

Mike shrugged. He leaned forward from where he had been reclining in his chair, moved his elbows from his belly to rest on the edge of the table. His added weight made the table tilt in his direction. “I like the way you sing,” he said. “I don’t need a whole lot more convincing.”

“Then you’ll understand why I might need to hear you sing first,” Llewyn countered, and one of Mike’s eyebrows shot up in intrigue.

“Deal.” He got up, sending their plates lurching toward Llewyn as the table leaned back to square, and left the kitchen. The hallway was longer than Llewyn had previously guessed, given the number of heavy footsteps he heard Mike leave behind as he tramped somewhere, probably his bedroom. Mike returned a few moments later with a banjo in his arms.

“Banjo?” Llewyn said.

“Best instrument there is.”

Llewyn waved a hand. “Can’t argue with that.” He had never used a banjo in his life, maybe had never even properly heard one.

Mike nodded, and eyed him for a minute. Llewyn felt the distinct veil of his gaze lift the second Mike decided what he was going to play him, and looked down at his banjo.

It took Llewyn a few instrumental bars to realize that the song wasn’t unfamiliar to him, just that being played on a banjo, and not on his acoustic, like he was used to hearing it. When Mike started singing, Llewyn felt something in his heart open up that he knew, instinctually, had been closed for a very long time.

_Queen Jane lay in labor full nine days or more_  
Til her women grew so tired, they could no longer there  
They could no longer there

_“Good women, good women, good women that you may be_  
Will you open my right side and find my baby?  
And find my baby”

_“Oh no,” cried the women, “That’s a thing that can never be_  
We will call on King Henry and hear what he may say  
And hear what he may say”

_King Henry was sent for, King Henry he did come_  
Saying, “What does ail you, my lady? Your eyes, they look so dim  
Your eyes, they look so dim”

_“King Henry, King Henry, will you do one thing for me?_  
Will you open my right side and find my baby  
And find my baby?”

_“Oh no,” cried King Henry, “That’s a thing that I can never do_  
If I lose the flower of England, I shall lose the branch too  
I shall lose the branch too”

_There was fiddling, aye, and dancing on the day the babe was born_  
But poor Queen Jane beloved lay cold as a stone  
Lay cold as a stone

When Mike finished, Llewyn watched as he straightened from his hunch over the banjo, and opened his eyes again. Llewyn had never before felt quite the way he did that moment, and it took him a minute to try putting together his thoughts.

“Wow,” he said, knowing full well that such a response was not enough, given the lengthy pause he’d taken to gather himself. “Okay.”

Mike just laughed. “You convinced now?”

“Where did you learn to play that thing?” Llewyn asked, for he had been watching Mike’s fingers pick and pluck the thin steel strings with the ease and fluidity of someone who had spent many years practicing.

“I took a tour of the South when I was younger,” he said. “Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee. Saw Nashville for the first time on the eve of my twenty-fourth birthday.”

Llewyn had heard about Nashville, had wanted to go there, and Chicago, and Grand Rapids. He had dreamed of those places more nights and on more couches than he cared to admit to anyone, even himself.

“Wow,” he said again.

Mike laughed. And he shrugged. And he shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “I’ve never played like that before, in front of only one person.”

Llewyn’s bottom up pushed up, in confusion. “Well, you’re certainly a natural at it,” he found himself saying, and that place in Llewyn’s heart grew a little bigger when Mike looked up at him with wide eyes.

“You think?”

Llewyn wondered when the big man with all the bravado and surety of a few minutes ago had turned into the hunching, uncertain dreamer he now saw. “Hell yeah,” he said.

Mike smiled, and Llewyn smiled, and he felt, for the first time in a very, very long time, that he was beginning to get somewhere.


	3. Chapter 3

They agreed to meet a few days later, once Llewyn and Mike had each had a chance to digest the idea of partnering up for real. With a flash of his infrequently-seen charming side, Llewyn managed to get Mike’s phone number, and avoided having to admit that he hadn’t lived in one place long enough to get a phone number since he fled his parents’ house.

Llewyn had been kind of loath to leave Mike’s apartment – to go where? he asked himself, as Mike let him out the front door that afternoon. He didn’t like to think of himself as homeless – starving artist was more the term for Llewyn – but he knew that if this was going to work between him and Mike, he had to take it slow. Sharing a couple gigs at the Gaslight was one thing; sharing an apartment was an entirely other, separate thing, a much more serious thing indeed.

Llewyn wondered when he’d started thinking past tomorrow.

So, for a week, he returned almost grudgingly to his life of couch surfing, calling up to the Gorfeins’ place at the last minute that night, catching the 3 Train uptown when Mr. Gorfein welcomed him enthusiastically. Their Village friend, their ethnic friend, their traveling troubadour for the evening – whatever it was they wanted from him, he was willing to trade it for their cheerful company and their unethically comfortable sectional sofa.

When the Gorfeins told him they were leaving for a long weekend upstate, he called down to Jean and Jim’s place in the Village, and Jean, the glow of her recent marriage still shimmering in her voice, offered their loveseat to him with the bright familiarity of an old friend, which he appreciated, since they had only met a few months before, when her husband Jim had played a set down at the Gaslight.

Llewyn liked Jean enough. She was pretty and warm, and she had a voice that would knock any producer’s socks off if she ever got a chance to audition for one. Her only flaw was her husband Jim.

A mailroom grunt by day, Jim wrote trite, gaudy songs in the evenings, using the flashy, brand-new acoustic Llewyn always assumed had been a wedding present. The only time Llewyn had ever heard any of them played all-out was at that set the Gaslight, a few months ago. But in the time since, he’d heard Jean hum one or two of them while she cooked or washed dishes, and they were always just a little bit off, a half-key lower in tune, just enough for Llewyn to wonder where Jim had gotten his inspiration in the first place.

He spent the rest of the week at Jean and Jim’s place, waking to the smell of pancakes on the griddle on his last morning there, finding both that it was seven a.m., and Jean and Jim were already fully dressed. If he sometimes felt inadequate around them, those feelings most often occurred to him in the mornings, just after waking, when he unerringly felt as if a truck had run him over.

“Good morning,” Jean said, turning from her place at the stove to smile at him. “Breakfast is ready, if you’d like some.”

Jean wasn’t the best cook, but Llewyn had spent nearly all of the money he’d made in tips from his last Gaslight show on food this week, and he couldn’t afford to eat out again today, make a phone call to Mike, and get himself there, all at once. He let her slide three pancakes onto a plate for him. Llewyn didn’t miss the look Jim served him too, when Jean gave him the first plate.

“So,” Jim said, a sharp edge in his voice. When Llewyn turned to face him, Jim’s face nearly split in a dazzling grin meant to put Llewyn back in his place. “Heard you played at the Gaslight again on New Year’s Eve?”

Llewyn nodded as he shoved a big bite of pancakes in his mouth. He stared at Jim as if the food were a way he could intimidate him. “I did.”

“How did it go? I’ve been dying to play there again myself.”

Llewyn shrugged. He wouldn’t tell Jim about Mike – that was a decision he realized he’d made days ago, maybe even before he had called down here and asked to borrow the couch. “I made a decent amount. Good crowd.”

Jim nodded effusively. Jean sat down beside him, across from Llewyn, and Llewyn watched as she put her hand over his.

“I’m sure you’ll get another chance to play there soon,” Jean said to Jim, who smiled, this time much less obnoxiously, and nodded.

“Pappi’s always looking for new talent,” Llewyn said, even though he didn’t quite know that for sure, and guessed that, really, all Pappi was looking for was a new place to get some smack.

“There will always be other places to play, if he’s not,” Jim added. Llewyn stared at him, his mouth a flat line. “I’ve heard about a few other places that are letting new artists take their stages in place of jazz acts.”

“That club down the street, for example,” Jean said. Llewyn didn’t know what she was talking about, and instantly felt a wave of jealousy flood his veins.

“Oh, yeah,” Jim said. “They’ve had posters up for weeks now.”

Llewyn wondered, briefly, if Jim was fucking with him. “Have they?” he asked. “Where is this place? I haven’t heard about it.”

“Oh, you haven’t?” Jim said, and Llewyn saw a snide grin creeping up the side of his mouth. “Village Vanguard?”

“They’re taking folk acts now?” Llewyn asked.

“Apparently,” Jim said. “I guess they’ve started realizing that innovation comes in many forms.”

Llewyn wanted so much to groan at that, but he silenced himself with another bite of pancakes, and settled for a long, sharp sigh through his nose.

Breakfast was fairly silent after that, Jean and Jim exchanging comfortable pleasantries and ignoring Llewyn. He thought that maybe Jim felt he’d done a good enough job of backing Llewyn into a corner, and Llewyn, still tired, didn’t have the energy to fight his way out of there.

Jim didn’t work weekends – he’d told Llewyn he dedicated his Saturday and Sunday afternoons to “studying his craft” – so, as soon as they’d finished breakfast, and Llewyn had made his show of insisting on doing the dishes (he never actually did them, because Jean always insisted right back), he packed up his things and dashed out of there.

And straight to the nearest payphone.

Mike had written his phone number on a strip of paper, which he’d then folded up and placed, when he learned Llewyn didn’t have a winter coat, inside the cuff of Llewyn’s right-hand glove. It had stayed there, tucked against Llewyn’s palm, tickling him occasionally, reminding him of what he was living for the rest of the week.

He slid it out and unfolded it, then tucked a coin in to the slot in the payphone and dialed the numbers he read.

Mike answered on the third ring.

“It’s Llewyn,” Llewyn said.

“Finally,” Mike said, and Llewyn felt his dark morning mood lift a little bit.

“I’m in the Village,” he said. “I can be at your place in twenty or so minutes.”

“All right. You remember where it is?”

Llewyn had no idea how close he was to Mike’s place, but the Village wasn’t so big, and he guessed that he could walk there in about that much time. “Uh, yeah, I think so.”

“Okay. Call if you get lost,” Mike said, only half-teasing, and Llewyn rolled his eyes as he hung up.


	4. Chapter 4

Llewyn walked around the Village for an hour before he gave up and called Mike.

“You didn’t remember where it was,” Mike said, on the first ring, which made Llewyn’s self-deprecating grimace turn into an almost-sheepish smile.

“Give me the address?” Llewyn asked, a little concerned that Mike would be put off by the semblance of his arrogant bravado, when really, as much as Llewyn didn’t want to admit to it, it was only grumbling embarrassment that had kept him from calling.

Mike gave him the address, though, and Llewyn, breathing his exasperated sigh into his fist as if to warm himself, hung up the payphone, turned the corner, and buzzed the first apartment building on the block.

“You’re a disgrace,” Mike said cheerfully through the intercom system. The security door buzzed mockingly, and Llewyn walked up all three flights of stairs, to where Mike was waiting with the front door open.

The first thing Llewyn noticed was that Mike was a hell of a lot taller than Llewyn remembered him being. The second was that he hadn’t prepared anything to show Mike like he promised he would.

The third, much to Llewyn’s chagrin, was that Mike wore a denim button-down shirt and khaki pants, and looked all-around much more well-put-together than Llewyn would ever hope to.

“Hi,” Llewyn said, when he mounted the landing.

Mike smirked, and he pushed himself up against the door so that Llewyn had to squeeze by him to enter.

The place seemed just as homey and comfortable as Llewyn remembered it being: walls a dull cream, the orange couch in the corner, a mahogany-colored end table by the front door. The teal rug on the floor and the white kitchen appliances just made it feel even warmer, even more like Llewyn belonged.

“How’ve you been?” Mike asked, his back to Llewyn momentarily as he locked the front door’s several locks. Llewyn couldn’t remember him doing that the night they’d spent together, and wondered if they’d even locked the door at all, then.

“Good, good,” Llewyn said. “Here and there, you know.” He felt weird lying, but again, in the face of such warmth and normalcy, Llewyn felt weird about Mike knowing how much of a vagrant layabout he really was.

“Nice.”

“What about you?” Llewyn asked, plunking his guitar case on the kitchen table and sitting down.

“I’ve been here, mostly,” Mike said. He went down the hallway and opened a door, and Llewyn saw blue walls and silvery afternoon light streaming in. He realized then that the kitchen only had the one window, and the living room had no windows at all. “There’s a new song I’ve been trying to nail on this thing, and I haven’t quite been able to do it and sing at the same time,” Mike continued as he walked back in with his banjo.

Llewyn snapped to attention. “You want me to sing?”

Mike grinned. “There we go!” He slid a sheet of paper to Llewyn, who gave it a cursory glance.

“Handwritten lyrics?”

“Learned ’em from a guy down at the docks,” he said. “He was passing through from ’cross the pond, and I work down there, so.”

Llewyn tried not to balk at that bit of information, or make it quite so obvious that his eyes strayed to Mike’s arms, as if in search of muscles, physical evidence of his so-called docks work. “You work at the docks?”

“Yeah, the Fulton piers.”

Llewyn smiled. “Funny. I don’t smell any fish.”

Mike rolled his eyes, but he smirked, too. “And I don’t hear any singing.”

“You have to play the tune, first. I don’t know this one.”

“All right, all right, listen,” Mike said, and he brushed his fingers over the strings on his banjo. The tune was multitudinous, and Mike’s fingers seemed to tap the strings rather than pluck them, but the melody came to Llewyn almost instantly.

“Okay, okay,” he said.

Mike stopped playing and looked at him. “You got the idea? That quickly?”

“I wanna hum it first.” Llewyn took a pencil out from the pocket of his pants, and, realizing its tip had snapped off, sighed. “You got a pencil or something? I want to mark the syllables.”

Mike provided one, and Llewyn broke down the lyrics according to the melody he’d heard Mike play. When he finished, Mike started playing, and he counted himself in.

They played this way for several hours, Mike playing the melody from memory, scratching notes and ideas down on a piece of paper he took out of his pocket, Llewyn annotating the lyrics sheet Mike had given him. They hummed and pieced and experimented together, alongside each other, each one inside his own head, and inside the other’s at the same time.

Mike played the melody several times for Llewyn, line by line at first, very slow, then verse by verse. Each time, he smiled at Llewyn like Llewyn had just made the biggest accomplishment of his life – his eyes twinkled, kaleidoscopic, as Llewyn sang for him for the first time. He had never seen someone look so impressed, wear such raw surprise and appreciation on his face before. The sun might have gone down, and Mike might have had to flip on the overhead light before Llewyn felt confident enough to try the whole song at once, but it didn’t matter at all. They were working together, and that was all that seemed to matter.

Mike counted him in this time, and Llewyn felt safer at his pace than he had when he’d counted himself in. He let Mike’s melody lull him in, the sleepy, gentle banjo introducing him to the lyrics like an old friend.

 _Are you going to Scarborough Fair_  
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme  
Remember me to one who lives there  
She once was a true love of mine

 _On the side of a hill in the deep forest green_  
Tracing of sparrow on snow-crested brown  
Blankets and bedclothes the child of the mountain  
Sleeps unaware of the clarion call

 _Tell her to make me a cambric shirt:_  
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme  
Without no seams nor needlework  
Then she’ll be a true love of mine

 _On the side of a hill a sprinkling of leaves_  
Washes the grave with silvery tears  
A soldier cleans and polishes a gun  
Sleeps unaware of the clarion call

 _Tell her to find me an acre of land_  
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme  
Between the salt water and the sea strand  
Then she’ll be a true love of mine

 _War bellows blazing in scarlet battalions_  
Generals order their soldiers to kill  
And to fight for a cause they’ve long ago forgotten

 _Tell her to reap it with a sickle of leather_  
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme  
And gather it all in a bunch of heather  
Then she’ll be a true love of mine

When they finished, Llewyn felt strangely, completely at ease, entirely unconcerned with the rest of the world. His heart didn’t skip any beats, like it sometimes did when he played; his mind didn’t buzz with the ambient discontent he was so used to ignoring. He hadn’t felt this way in a very long time.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Mike asked to meet again the next day, and Llewyn, surprising himself, agreed. Unless he was staying on someone’s couch, he didn’t usually choose to be around people all that much, and especially not every day. He preferred to make himself scarce – to keep in his friends’ good graces, since he knew a lot of them could only take so much of his homelessness, his mooching, and to keep himself afloat in his own head. Sometimes, things got so deep up there, swirled to the rhythm of their own tides, that Llewyn felt like he was drowning.

But Mike didn’t make him feel like that. When Llewyn left for Jean and Jim’s, he felt a palpable disappointment wash over him, one that was very different from what he expected to feel when he left another acquaintance’s apartment for the last time. Now, he felt more like he was settling for something lesser, giving up something he wasn’t convinced he had to, the way he imagined people felt when they grew too old to maintain their homes. Mike had, in the span of a week, succeeded in making Llewyn believe in people again.

Though, he didn’t really understand that yet. Instead, he walked down the street against frigid wind, one hand shoved into the pocket of his pants, one around the handle of his guitar case, wondering why he felt lighter, why his head didn’t buzz the way it always did when he hung out around people for eight hours, like he had today.

Jean and Jim weren’t home when he got there, but he’d never given them a time to expect him, so he buzzed up to a couple of other places in the building until someone responded, and then he waited outside their front door until they got home.

Waiting took longer than he anticipated, however, and he woke up to a sharp, swift kick to the stomach.

“Jim,” he heard Jean scold in barely a whisper. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Get up, Llewyn,” Jim said.

He obliged, while Jean continued muttering, “shouldn’t have done that, I’m so sorry,” over and over beside him.

“Do you think you can just show up like this? Whenever you want?” Jim asked. He was very close, but Llewyn didn’t smell beer on his breath, or any alcohol for that matter. For a fleeting second, Llewyn thought about how ridiculous it was for any sober person to be as close to him as Jim was, but he stamped firmly on the corners of the smile that tugged on his lips – he had been beaten up far too many times for ill-timed, embarrassing fits of uncontrollable laughter. Plus, it was long after midnight now, and Llewyn really just wanted a place to crash.

“I’m sorry, man,” he said, trying to shrug Jim off of him. “I got kind of caught up with this friend of mine, we were writing, working on something together, you know how it goes.”

He looked up through his eyelashes at Jim, whose mouth formed an awkward, firm little line. Llewyn held his gaze and, to his surprise, saw straight through Jim’s bravado and realized something. Something in whatever Llewyn had just said – songwriting, collaborating, friends – had struck a nerve with Jim, but a very specific kind of nerve, one that Jim did not seem willing to admit to out of pride. Whether it was pride in himself or his career, Llewyn didn’t know, but watching Jim squirm under his gaze brought another smile to his lips, and, this time, he flashed it.

Having successfully disarmed Jim, who turned sharply away from Llewyn to unlock the door, he followed the couple into their apartment and promptly crashed on their couch.

Llewyn was out of there early the next day, somewhere between seven and eight in the morning. He snuck out of Jean and Jim’s, and headed down to the diner around the corner, where he slapped three of his last fifteen bucks on the counter and loitered over a cup of coffee and an omelet with Virginia ham, cheddar cheese, and hash browns, until it was an acceptable time to go over and call on Mike.

He made himself wait until ten a.m., and he made himself walk at a normal pace once he left the diner, swinging his guitar case.

He remembered which building to look for this time, and he buzzed the right apartment – or, at least he thought he did, but he began to second-guess himself when a full minute passed, and Mike didn’t pounce on the buzzer.

It was still early enough for Llewyn to reason with himself that Mike could be asleep. Maybe he’d ducked out to the bodega for milk. He waited another minute or so, and then he buzzed the apartment again.

The second time, the door buzzed, and when Llewyn made it up the three flights of stairs, a very groggy-sounding Mike greeted him with, “Llewyn?” as he rubbed sleep from his eyes.

“Hey,” Llewyn said. He tried not to let his eyes skim down to Mike’s lower half, clad only in boxer shorts, which Llewyn had noticed were too small while ascending the stairs.

“I forgot to – ask when you were coming over,” Mike said, stifling a yawn, stretching his arms over his head as Llewyn snuck past him into the much warmer apartment. As he crossed the threshold, Llewyn brushed across Mike’s chest, which was noticeably softer – and warmer – than he had anticipated. “There’s no breakfast yet.”

“You were going to make me breakfast?” Llewyn asked, sitting down at the table.

“I mean, if you wanted some,” Mike said, locking the front door and sitting down. “I don’t mind sharing.” He gave Llewyn a sincere and eager smile, and Llewyn had to look away from him, because it was nearly blinding.

“Thanks.” He stuck his gaze to the table like a piece of gum. Mike felt very close to him, just across the table. A part of Llewyn, some strange and intrusive part of him, longed to stretch over the distance and take one of Mike’s hands in his, to turn it over and study his soft palms, callused fingertips. It felt ridiculous to want to do this, to want to understand how the music came out of him, when they’d only played together the one time.

But, Llewyn argued with himself, he’d never heard anyone play like Mike could play. His memories of the day before reverberated through his hollow chest like jazz, filled all the holes and made up for all the deficiencies Llewyn had been fighting all his life.

Such words escaped Llewyn’s brain, exactly – most of this sensation came to him in the firm and urgent _need_ to touch Mike, to feel his warm, sturdy body against his, in whatever way, small or brief, he could get it. Maybe the worst thing about being as friendless as Llewyn was, about the nature of his traveling work, about being virtually homeless, was that he had so few opportunities to be touched. Unless he wanted to fuck his fans – which, Llewyn thought, he wouldn’t do even if he had any – there were no opportunities for physical contact with other people. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d hugged someone, the last time he’d let his head fall to rest on someone else’s shoulder, closed his eyes, breathed in their scent.

As Mike faded at the table, head slumped in his hand, Llewyn thought about what it would feel like to hug Mike, to close his eyes, to breathe in Mike’s scent, to rest his head on Mike’s shoulder after a long day of –

And then, against Llewyn’s every instinct, he wondered what it would be like not to wander anymore.

“So,” Mike said suddenly, and Llewyn wondered if he’d been trying to wake himself up in this interim.

“Hm?”

“You want breakfast, or what?” Mike’s grin pulled on either side of his mouth, and Llewyn had no choice but to grin right back.

“I ate already, but you can make something for yourself while I tune up.”

“Okay.”

Mike set to work, cracking several eggs into a bowl, whisking them, frying them up. Llewyn, while he waited, tuned his guitar and, once that was done, gently strummed the strings, plucking idly, halfheartedly, at a melody from an old vinyl recording of some Guatemalan folk song he could remember his father humming as a child.

“What’s that?” Mike asked him, setting his plate of eggs down in the chair closest to Llewyn.

“The song?” Mike nodded as he chewed. “I’m not sure. Something my father used to hum while he cooked,” Llewyn answered.

“Your dad cooks?”

Llewyn shrugged. “Yeah, sometimes. You come here from another country, you gotta make it on your own. Cook your own food, do your own laundry, you know.” Llewyn had often related to this aspect of his father’s background – he had done most of these things for himself for nearly all of his own adult life. The only difference, Llewyn thought, was that he didn’t think he’d let that make him as bitter as his father was.

Mike nodded some more. Llewyn studied him idly as he played. There was something different about him today, something off. He was quieter, smiled less maybe. He seemed sad, but in a way Llewyn recognized. Not the way so many people like Jim wrote about in songs, where they cried after people or opportunities missed, but in a more aqueous way, less definable. The best way Llewyn could describe it was yearning, or aching, all of the pain intangible, all of the explanation of it inexpressible. It felt like he had forgotten something a very long time ago, and had been trying unsuccessfully to remember what it was, and was now reveling in a loop of his own failure, his own deficiencies.

Whatever it was, Llewyn saw it all over Mike’s face, wrinkled into the fabric of his shirt. He decided not to say anything about it unless Mike did, because he knew that, usually, when he felt this way, he didn’t want to be bothered.

Mike ate slowly and didn’t seem to notice Llewyn’s staring. He only looked up from his plate when Llewyn changed the song.

“Do you want to play today?” Mike asked, and Llewyn could hear his regret for asking in his voice.

“What do you mean?” Llewyn instantly, stupidly felt a bowling ball drop into the pit of his stomach, thinking about having to wander the streets of the Village in the cold all day, instead of lazing it off in Mike’s warm kitchen. He had no money, and it was too cold to find a bench to play for change, so he’d have to hightail it out to Queens to visit his sister. He’d probably have to jump the turnstile, too.

“Well, I mean,” Mike said, his voice drifting away in thought. “I guess I want to know if you want to do what we did last time, or if you’d, I don’t know, want to listen to some records, or something, instead.”

Relief washed over Llewyn’s body. “Oh, uh, yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I guess we can listen to some records, that’d be cool.”

A small smile broke over Mike’s face. “Great, nice. I’ve got a few 45s you can look at in the bedroom while I’m cleaning up, otherwise we can just listen to whatever the radio’s got.”

“All right,” Llewyn said, and he stood up from the table at the same time Mike did. Their faces got close, Llewyn could feel the heat of Mike’s face near his own, and for a second, the urge to reach out and stroke his cheek, feel the texture of his stubbly cheek, was overwhelming.

He left the room in slight embarrassment, almost hurriedly. He guessed which door was the bedroom, and got it right on the second try, after opening the door on a surprisingly clean, stark white bathroom.

The bedroom, by comparison, was not as neat. He felt weird being in the room by himself. Though it was small, Llewyn felt like he needed a guide to lead him through it, or someone to show him it was okay to be there. Clothes littered the floor, bare hardwood, and all the dresser drawers were open. The room was small, could only manage the unmade twin-sized bed in the far left corner, but the light blue walls and the window in the back opened it up a bit, presented a rather deep view of the alleyway below.

Llewyn wondered how Mike could afford this. As far as he knew, Mike didn’t work, and yet he could eat in excess, could afford to litter his floor with clothes, he could make rent on a one-bedroom, _and_ he had an enviable collection of LPs. That was more than Llewyn had ever hoped for.

He flipped through them, processing mostly titles by jazz artists. The stereo, which he’d seen but not acknowledged in the living room on his first night there, could hold three or four LPs at a time, so Llewyn picked a few titles – one by Tony Bennett, one by Frogman Henry, and another by Nina Simone, a new artist he’d heard sing in some bar around what felt like over a year ago.

When he returned to the living room, Mike was setting his frying pan upside down to dry, and toweling off his hands.

“You’ve got some place,” Llewyn said, walking toward the living room half of the first room. He didn’t really want to know how Mike afforded all of this – the majority of him really didn’t think it was important to know – but he couldn’t bear not to beat around the question, to at least see if Mike would offer any information.

“It’s suitable,” Mike said. “I like it a lot.” He turned, and Llewyn, much to his own dismay and surprise, had to look away so as not to become fixated on the motion of Mike’s thighs as he walked across the room.

“Certainly seems so.”

The building was warm, especially inside the apartment, but Llewyn still wondered how Mike wasn’t cold. Llewyn, no matter how long he’d been inside, or how many layers he wore, was always cold. He hadn’t taken off his fingerless gloves in the hour or so he’d been here, for instance.

But when Mike came over to stand beside him at the stereo, Llewyn could feel heat radiating from him like it was summer time, and he’d just come back from a long walk. He wanted again to touch Mike, to wrap himself in Mike’s warmth, if for no other reason than to shake this seemingly cosmic chill in which he’d been immersed his whole life.

“What’s here?” Mike asked, taking the 45s from Llewyn’s hands and flipping through them. “Nice,” he added, showing Llewyn the Nina Simone one. “Let’s play this one first.”

Llewyn agreed, and Mike set the stereo up to play all of the records in succession. Then, they sat on the couch. Their thighs were only an inch or so apart, and through the first song, which Mike insisted they listened to in silence, Llewyn could only think of leaning a little, of letting his legs fall open the way they usually did, so as to close the distance between him and Mike.

He didn’t want to feel this way, necessarily. Or, rather, he hadn’t _quite_ felt this way before. On the boat, in the Merchant Marine, he’d only fucked the guys he’d fucked because there was no one else, and their dock days were brief and so filled with work, he would have died of exhaustion if he’d gone out with the guys to the whorehouses they always seemed to find in each city they visited.

Llewyn noticed that Mike closed his eyes as Nina Simone sang. So, discreetly, he turned a little bit so he could watch Mike listening, making sure he maintained the distance between their legs so he wouldn’t get caught.

The longer she sang, the more Llewyn thought Mike got lost. He could see it in the curve of Mike’s mouth, slightly downturned, and the minor pinch of his eyebrows. Llewyn had heard of people who could listen with their souls, had heard stories of artists like Miles Davis, of Charlie Parker, whose music seemed only to communicate tales that had been whispered into their ears, by a voice only they could hear. He hadn’t expected Mike to be one such person – he hadn’t, in truth, expected to meet anyone with that ability in his entire life – but here he was. Sitting next to him, listening to music, their knees only barely an inch apart.

The track changed, and Llewyn caught Mike opening his eyes. He tried to look away before Mike noticed, but he wasn’t fast enough, and instead he held Mike’s gaze, expectant, inexplicably so.

“What was that called?” Llewyn asked, by way of drawing attention away from himself.

“Mood Indigo,” Mike replied. And then, without skipping a beat, he continued, “You ever hear a song that just…”

He trailed off, losing steam at a pace Llewyn found alarmingly quick, but he knew exactly what Mike meant.

“It tears at your heart, but it comes back with a needle and thread?”

Mike nodded. “Yeah.” He looked at Llewyn like maybe – and Llewyn only hoped this was true – he was the only person in the world who understood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you aren't familiar with Nina Simone's "Mood Indigo," I highly suggest you check it out for maximum angst and sad feels: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ninasimone/moodindigo.html


	6. Chapter 6

They sat like that for what felt like ages: Mike with his eyes closed, Llewyn staring hard at the gap between their legs, as if he could will it to close with only the sheer force of his mind.

He didn’t quite know what had passed between them, but Llewyn counted the minutes as they passed, as they got farther and farther away from it. He had seen something in Mike’s eyes that had kind of unsettled him. Not in a bad way, he was sure of that, but in a way that still made him deeply, existentially uncomfortable, as if Mike had looked at him and seen something he wasn’t sure he’d want Mike to see.

It wasn’t a bad thing because Llewyn knew that, eventually, somehow, if he wanted this all to work out, he was going to have to let Mike see those things.

He wondered exactly what he meant by “work out.” He knew for sure it didn’t all just relate to music.

For a time, especially back when he was in the Merchant Marine, Llewyn had often dreamt of a time, somewhere in the nearer future, when he’d have someone to talk to about all of the dark things that swirled through his brain, or someone who, when he came home at night, would help him forget he’d had those thoughts in the first place. He wasn’t sure if such a person existed, or, even if they did exist, if they could really succeed in making those thoughts, which felt more like a part of his identity than music did on some days, disappear, but he liked to imagine it. He liked to imagine this in his bunk on the ship, thin blanket tossed over his shoulders, when people felt very far away and real life even farther, when all he could think about was how comforting it would be, right then, to have someone snuggle up behind him, to feel the warmth of another person on his back, arms around him, shielding him from all of the thoughts and anguish he was throwing at himself.

He hated thinking about that time. It was a desolate thought to want someone to do that for him – he could provide little else in compensation, besides a brief and uninspired ditty here and there, maybe a pot of burnt coffee if someone let him touch their kitchen appliances. And as much as he didn’t want to, he always ended up feeling bad about himself after these thoughts, these imaginings, passed through his mind, because after all, there were few things he could think of in his current life that would be as fulfilling as these dreams.

Llewyn missed the next few songs on Nina Simone’s record thinking about this. Mike tossed out some comment about one of the songs, and Llewyn just nodded his head, trying to appear a solemn listener, and not to give away any of his real thoughts.

But Mike’s comment pulled him out of his head, and he remembered where he was supposed to be. Next to Mike, on the couch, in the orange living room in the Village, in New York City. In January 1960.

The most important of all of those things remained that he was sitting next to Mike.

The next song he tuned in for was one he’d heard on the radio before, and as soon as Nina began singing, Llewyn felt a flush rise on his cheeks.

_Love me or leave me and let me be lonely_  
You won’t believe me but I love you only  
I’d rather be lonely than happy with somebody else

_You might find the night time the right time for kissing_  
Night time is my time for just reminiscing  
Regretting instead of forgetting with somebody else

_There’ll be no one unless that someone is you  
I intended to be independently blue_

_I want your love, don’t wanna borrow_  
Have it today to give back tomorrow  
Your love is my love  
There’s no love for nobody else

_Say, love me or leave me and let me be lonely_  
You won’t believe me but I love you only  
I’d rather be lonely than happy with somebody else

_You might find the night time the right time for kissing_  
Night time is my time for just reminiscing  
Regretting instead of forgetting with somebody else

_There’ll be no one unless that someone is you  
I intended to be independently blue_

_Say, I want your love, don’t wanna borrow_  
Have it today to give back tomorrow  
Your love is my love  
My love is your love  
There’s no love for nobody else

Llewyn sat bolt straight for the rest of the song. A quick glance over at Mike told him that he was still listening, eyes closed. He’d bob his head now and then, feeling the jazz behind Nina’s voice, eyebrows set in a frown.

Llewyn wondered what he was thinking. He wondered this with athletic and nearly vengeful anxiety, nearly to the point of frustration that he couldn’t read minds. This song, the lyrics – _love me or leave me_ _and let me be lonely_ – hadn’t Llewyn felt those same things in the week that had passed since their first meeting? Hadn’t they eluded words until just now?

He wanted to get up, launch himself across the room for any plausible reason, a glass of water, a napkin to catch a feigned sneeze, a snack he wasn’t invited to have. He wanted to lean over and snuggle in closer to Mike, to lift one of his arms and bury himself in the crux he created. He wanted to do something, anything, with the burst of nervous energy that had suddenly blasted straight through him.

Instead, when it was over, he said, “That was some song.”

Mike opened his eyes. “You’ve never heard it before?”

Llewyn looked around before looking at Mike. “Uh, well, yeah, I’ve heard it before. On the radio, maybe, sitting in the Gaslight one afternoon. Or maybe some other café.”

“It’s one of her best,” Mike said. “The piano is amazing. Really simple throughout, and then it just gets better, during the interlude.”

Llewyn nodded. He recalled the piano, rapid as any he’d ever heard, and placed it as background music to his frantic state. “It’s really something.”

Mike nodded. “You play, at all?”

“Piano? Nah. We didn’t have money for one, or for lessons. I only learned guitar because my dad brought his over from Guatemala.”

Mike nodded.

“Do you?”

“No,” Mike said. “But I’d like to try some day.”

Llewyn smiled. He wanted to pat Mike’s thigh, or his shoulder, or something. Instead, he just said, “Well, if we get this thing right, maybe we’ll get the chance.”

Mike smiled, and for the first time, Llewyn saw some of the despair behind his eyes disappear.

The rest of the Nina Simone album played, and then it switched to Frogman Henry, and Mike seemed to stop listening.

“A guy I used to know from Louisiana used to talk about him all the time,” Llewyn said, jutting his chin toward the stereo.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. He used to go on about how great he was to see on the jazz strip in New Orleans. But he’d only been there once, so I don’t know what he was on about.”

Mike shrugged. “Sometimes you only need to hear people play once to know you like them.”

Llewyn nodded, and then, after too long of a minute passed, he kicked himself because, if he was right, he had just been hit on, and missed the chance to respond.

Frogman Henry played on. The atmosphere in the room didn’t seem to change outside of Llewyn’s own personal internal climate, and there, he was frigid with self-disgust.

He wallowed for a minute, and then wondered if, perhaps, he could make it seem like he was thinking about that comment. If, perhaps, he hadn’t ignored it by mistake, but had instead been savoring it.

It took almost no time to think of what to say. “Did you know the moment you saw me that you’d want to try collaborating?”

He realized, only after Mike looked at him with a half-smile on his lips, that he’d neglected to add “play” after “you saw me.”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Mike said, and again he trailed off just long enough for Llewyn to feel like he was unraveling from the inside. “Well, I mean that I’ve seen you play more than once. I’d see you in Tompkins Square Park or something, and you’d be playing on a bench there. I’d see you around town making noise occasionally, but you always seemed lost in your mind, or in the music, or so in a rush to get somewhere else, to be somewhere else, or maybe even to be _someone_ else, that I never thought to stop you. Never could work up the courage to drop a dollar or some change or something in your guitar case. Until the night at the Gaslight, really.”

Llewyn looked at Mike. He was neither a noticeably verbose or silent person, but this was still the most Llewyn had ever heard Mike say in one go, and all of it was about him.

He felt, for the first time in a long time, like crying.

He couldn’t also help but note that this was the first time in so many years that he had felt anything at all as acutely as this.

“You followed me around?” was what he said out loud, though.

“No,” Mike said, laughing, which Llewyn took as a good sign. “Not exactly. But I’d find you here and there. This all happened over the course of several months, you know? I’d see you in the park mostly in the summer, early fall. Then I lost you for a long time. Months. And then I ended up in the Gaslight that night by pure chance, and you were there. Got up last, just as I was thinking of going. And I knew I couldn’t leave without saying something to you.”

The same burning feeling clawed at the insides of his chest again. He wanted to know which of the dozens of things it was, which of the horrors that had been released in this moment like his chest was Pandora’s box.

“Wow,” was all he could manage. “I didn’t know that.”

Mike laughed again. “Good. I was hoping you didn’t think of me as some creep who followed you around.”

Llewyn smiled. “No, no.”

“Good,” Mike said again. And then, so quickly it took Llewyn an extra second to realize what was happening, Mike had closed the gap between them and was leaning over. Llewyn nearly jumped up, afraid that Mike was passing out, or losing consciousness, or something else horrific – because of course, that is what would happen to someone new in his life, someone he had, however ridiculously quickly it had happened, really begun to like. But shock kept him in place, and he realized, after the brief and terrifying moment was over, that Mike was simply leaning over to plant a kiss on Llewyn’s mouth.

_Fuck_ , Llewyn thought.

Mike pulled away very quickly.

“Fuck,” Mike said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have – I didn’t mean to – that was a –”

But he didn’t finish because Llewyn had already leaned back over, was already kissing him back. He had to push himself up to reach Mike’s mouth, and out of excitement, he’d propelled himself rather far forward, thrown himself off-balance. In trying not to completely fall all over Mike, he threw out a hand and it landed on Mike’s bare thigh.

It was an accident, really, but still Llewyn pulled back again, half in fear of retribution, half in utter embarrassment of having gotten so worked up that he’d lost his balance.

“Jeez, I’m sorry,” Llewyn said. He sat upright again, recreated the distance between Mike and himself.

“It’s okay, I’m fine,” Mike said. Llewyn didn’t move. His brain was moving too quickly to process any kind of physical action on top of everything else: he had just _kissed_ Mike, who had been inexplicably hospitable to him, who promised continued hospitality for some unthinkable reason in every action he performed, every word he spoke.

But Llewyn remembered that he hadn’t kissed Mike first. Mike had kissed him first. And that opened the door to all kinds of other possibilities.

 


End file.
